That will be true for Katz’s Deli & Corned Beef Emporium at 3300 Dufferin St. in North York on Friday, May 31, at 6 p.m., after 49 years in business.

I think it’s Toronto’s best deli, although readers should know the four generations of the Katz and Dorfman families who made it the iconic deli it is today are my cousins.

But don’t take my word for it.

Ever since Faye Dorfman and her son, Aubrey, made the emotional decision to close their 300-seat mecca for all things deli, business has doubled with gusts up to tripled, as loyal customers — including entire families with grandparents, parents and children in tow — have poured in for one last nosh, one last laugh, one last tear, and to say goodbye.

Several have reminisced about departed family and friends whose last wish — literally — was for a corned beef sandwich from Katz’s.

There have been emotional reunions with members of Canada’s military.

Faye’s husband, Jeffrey, Katz’s founder, signed up as a cadet in the Governor General’s Horse Guards when he was 17, starting a life-long second career in the reserves. At the time of his death from cancer in 2014, he was the GG’s Honorary Lieutenant Colonel.

Katz’s Deli & Corned Beef Emporium on Duffern St. will close May 31, 2019, after 49 years. (Veronica Henri/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network)

“I thought our closing would be a big deal,” Faye said. “I just didn’t think it would be this big a deal.”

So why close after so many years of success?

The family says it’s for business and personal reasons that anyone who operates a family-run restaurant will understand, given the hard work, painstaking attention to detail and long hours it demands.

Jeffrey, Faye and his mother, Lillian, started Katz’s in 1970 with a 36-seat restaurant on Dufferin St. Jeffrey’s maternal grandparents, Jenny and Aaron Katz, supplied the homemade recipes Katz’s has used ever since to produce everything in-house.

Katz’s moved to a larger location on Dufferin in 1979 and to its current home in 1988, with its loyal, dedicated and dependable staff headed by manager Marlon Knight.

Jeffrey’s commanding presence, as it was in life, is everywhere in Katz’s, including in its sign and business logo, which features a stylized image of him in his GG regalia, with his impressive moustache, and a whimsical statue that greets customers at the door.

Katz’s Deli & Corned Beef Emporium on Duffern St. will close May 31, 2019, after 49 years. (Veronica Henri/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network)

Lillian gave Katz’s its mission statement: “Give them what they can’t get anywhere else. Keep the menu simple, but do it well.”

For Aubrey, 35, who took over from his dad, Katz’s has always been a central part of his life. When other kids brown-bagged peanut butter sandwiches to school, he had corned beef. His first job was as a dishwasher at age 10.

Today, he loves nothing more than when the restaurant is full, with customers eating, talking and joking with each other.

“People come for the food,” Aubrey says, “but they also come for the experience.”

The family built a thriving take-out and catering business and was a perennial winner in the Sun’s Readers’ Choice Awards, as well as catering numerous Sun events, most memorably the huge bash staff held for our founder, Doug Creighton, after he was ousted by the board he brought into the company.

The food that night kept coming, beyond anything we’d paid for, Jeffrey’s way of saying how much he admired Doug and our founding editor, Peter Worthington.

My fondest wish is they all get together in heaven every so often, for a Katz’s corned beef sandwich.

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